Your Heritage
Porthtowan Surf Life Saving Club - one of the first surf clubs in Britain - enlisted volunteers and local young people to record a comprehensive oral history of surfing in Britain, much of which originated on the club’s doorstep.
Through interviews the project examined the development of the seaside sport, from its early origins of lone surfers riding waves on makeshift wooden craft in the 1930s, the development of surfboard shaping and changes in wetsuit technology, to its current status as an international cultural phenomenon and multi-million pound industry.
Participants were trained to record and edit the interviews, which were then summarised, catalogued, and highlights edited together, to create a digital learning resource which has been disseminated to local schools and museums and made publicly available via a project website.
The First Wave ensured that people's memories, feelings, attitudes, and experiences of surfing and surfing culture in Britain were recorded, engaged a wider audience in Cornwall’s sporting heritage, and created a free online archive to be shared by current and future generations.